Dr Richard Hooper, PhD
Senior Lecturer in Medical Statistics
email: r.l.hooper@qmul.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)20 7882 7324
Fax: +44 (0)20 7882 2552
Centre for Primary Care and Public Health
Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry
58 Turner Street
Whitechapel
London
E1 2AB
After gaining his first degree in Maths in 1988, Richard studied statistics at the Cambridge University Statistical Laboratory and got his first experience of medical research working for a year in the Academic Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge. Following a further year as a government statistician in the Department of Health, he returned to Cambridge to join the newly established Winnicott Research Unit (now based at Reading University), researching mother-infant interactions and postnatal depression. During this period he also did a PhD in statistical pattern recognition. In 1996 he moved to King's College London, where he worked as a lecturer and statistical consultant in the medical school, as well as a reviewer and adviser for the NHS Executive's project grant and research training fellowship schemes. In 1999 the medical schools of Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals merged with the medical school at King's, and Richard joined a thriving group of academic public health researchers at Guy’s. During this time he developed the statistics course for the Master of Public Health programme at King’s, and enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with members of the King’s Centre for Military Health Research. He moved to Imperial College London in 2006 when the Respiratory Epidemiology & Public Health group at King’s moved their operation there, and focused on the epidemiology of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
In 2010 he joined the Centre for Primary Care and Public Health at Barts and The London Medical School as a Senior Lecturer in Medical Statistics, where he has a leading role in the statistical and design advice work of the newly formed Research Design Service London.
Research interests:
During his time as an asthma researcher, Richard developed an interest in the study of diet and disease - in particular the use of principal components analysis to identify dietary “patterns”. With former colleagues at Imperial he is now taking a critical look at this increasingly popular approach. His current research interests also include trials methodology, including the design and analysis of trials of diagnostic tests, and graphical methods for depicting complex interventions in trials. He has also published on the interpretation of statistical significance and power.
Publications:
Burney PGJ, Hooper R. Forced vital capacity, airway obstruction and survival in a general population sample from the United States of America. Thorax 2011;66:49-54.
Hooper R, Heinrich J, Omenaas E, Sausenthaler S, Garcia-Larsen V, Bakolis I, Burney P. Dietary patterns and risk of asthma: results from three countries in European Community Respiratory Health Survey II. Br J Nutr 2010;103:1354-1365.
Bakolis I, Hooper R, Thompson RL, Shaheen SO. Dietary patterns and adult asthma: population-based case-control study. Allergy 2010;65:606-615.
Burney P, Summers C, Chinn S, Hooper R, van Ree R, Lidholm J. Prevalence and distribution of sensitisation to foods in the European Community Respiratory Health Survey: a EuroPrevall analysis. Allergy 2010;65:1182-1188.
Hooper R. The Bayesian interpretation of a P-value depends only weakly on statistical power in realistic situations. J Clin Epidemiol 2009;62:1242-1247.
Rona RJ, Hooper R, Jones M, Iversen AC, Hull L, Murphy D, Hotopf M, Wessely S. The contribution of prior psychological symptoms and combat exposure to post Iraq deployment mental health in the UK military. J Trauma Stress 2009;22:11-19.
Hooper R, Rona RJ, Jones M, Fear NT, Hull L, Wessely S. Cigarette and alcohol use in the UK Armed Forces, and their association with combat exposures: A prospective study. Addict Behav 2008;33:1067-1071.
Hooper R, Calvert J, Thompson RL, Deetlefs ME, Burney P. Urban/rural differences in diet and atopy in South Africa. Allergy 2008;63:425-431.
Cox K, Britten N, Hooper R, White P. Patients' involvement in decisions about medicines: GPs' perceptions of their preferences. Brit J Gen Pract 2007;57:777-784.
Bousquet PJ, Hooper R, Kogevinas M, Jarvis D, Burney P. Number of allergens to be tested to assess allergenic sensitization in epidemiologic studies: results of the European Community Respiratory Health Survey I. Clin Exp Allergy 2007;37:780-787.
Rona RJ, Hooper R, Jones M, Hull L, Browne T, Horn O, Murphy D, Hotopf M, Wessely S. Mental health screening in armed forces before the Iraq war and prevention of subsequent psychological morbidity: follow-up study. BMJ 2006;333:991-991.